An international workshop on the Cult Statue of a Goddess was held at the Getty Villa on May 9, 2007. Sponsored by the J. Paul Getty Museum, it brought together distinguished speakers from Italy, New Zealand, and the United States as well as observers from the Sicilian Regional Ministry of Culture and Environmental Heritage, the Archaeological Institute of America, and colleagues from across the Getty. The topics addressed comprise pseudo-acrolithic sculpture in Archaic and Classical Greece, art-historical observations about the Cult Statue, petrographic and micropalaeontological data about the statue, survey of soil residues from the statue, and pollen analysis of those soil residues.

The research undertaken and the information provided by this group will help better to determine the Cult Statue’s ancient origins. The results of this workshop were a part of the Getty Museum’s final stages of research before the statue was sent to Italy in 2011.

• Schedule of Proceedings
• Introduction
  Michael Brand
• Acrolithic and Pseudo-acrolithic Sculpture in Archaic and Classical Greece and the Provenance of the Getty Goddess
  Clemente Marconi
• Observations on the Cult Statue
  Malcolm Bell, III
• Petrographic and Micropalaeontological Data in Support of a Sicilian Origin for the Statue of Aphrodite
  Rosario Alaimo, Renato Giarrusso, Giuseppe Montana, and Patrick Quinn
• Soil Residues Survey for the Getty Acrolithic Cult Statue of a Goddess
  John Twilley
• Preliminary Pollen Analysis of a Soil Associated with the Cult Statue of a Goddess
  Pamela I. Chester
• List of Participants

Professor Clemente Marconi is James R. McCredie Professor of Greek Art and Archaeology at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

Professor Malcolm Bell, III, is Professor of Art History at the University of Virginia and Co-director, U.S. excavations at Morgantina, Sicily.

Mr. John Twilley is an art conservation scientist based in New York, New York

Dr. Pamela I. Chester is an archaeological palynologist based in New Zealand.

Dr. Michael Brand is Director, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.